The communication industry is rapidly changing and is offering a wide variety of new products and services. The number of different services available to customers continues to grow at a very rapid pace. The growth includes improvements in telephone equipment and communication systems. For example, in recent years, public use of wireless communication devices has significantly increased. Specifically, the purchase and use of cellular telephones has become commonplace. A cellular telephone may be generally defined as a mobile telephone that uses wireless communication to communicate to other devices. The cellular telephone communicates through a transmitter/receiver of a plurality of transmitters/receivers. The transmitter/receiver used for communication depends on the location of transmitter/receiver or signal strength of the transmitter/receiver with respect to the cellular telephone.
In previous decades, most cellular telephones were used by business people who worked away from their offices on a regular basis. However, today, many people use cellular telephones for convenience and for emergency purposes not associated with a business. The growth of the cellular industry has contributed to increased competition in the industry. Consequently, cellular service carriers have sought to reduce cost associated with rendering cellular service in order to provide competitive prices for cellular service. Also, cellular service carriers desire to reduce the number of unauthorized users of cellular service. Cellular service carriers are unable to collect service fees from unauthorized users because the unauthorized users are difficult to locate and are not contractually bound to pay service fees. Unauthorized use of cellular telephones is a potential source of lost income for the cellular service carriers.
In addition to the goals of reducing cost associated with providing cellular telephone service and preventing unauthorized use of cellular telephones, cellular service carriers desire to reduce the purchase cost of cellular telephones to potential customers. Reducing the cost of cellular telephones to potential customers helps to make the cellular telephones more affordable and thus may provide incentive for the potential customers to buy cellular telephones. In recent years, cellular telephones have been manufactured with operating features identical to those found in conventional telephones. Such operating features include storage and recall of numbers in memory, voice mail and call blocking. In order to provide such features, cellular telephones use digital circuits that are intelligently programmed to provide the multiple features. Due to cellular telephone mobility, cellular telephones must be light and compact. To meet the requirements of size and multiple features, a cellular telephone is constructed with sophisticated circuits that maximize the minimal space available within the cellular telephones. Due to the size and complexity of circuits designed for the cellular telephones, cellular telephones can be expensive. The expense of cellular telephones may preclude or discourage potential purchasers from buying cellular telephones. To increase the customer base in light of expensive cellular telephones, cellular service carriers help to reduce the cost of purchasing cellular telephones to potential customers by subsidizing the cost of cellular telephones.
A cellular service carrier may subsidize the cost of a cellular telephone by purchasing cellular telephones directly from manufacturers at a cost of $200 to $300 each and then selling the telephones to a retailer for less than $10 each. Thus, the retailer may sell the telephones at low cost to customers. To ensure that the customers are set up on the cellular network of the subsidizing cellular service carrier, the subsidizing cellular service carrier enters into a contract with the retailer. The contract requires the retailer to set up the purchased subsidized cellular telephone on the cellular network of the subsidizing cellular service carrier. If a subsidized cellular telephone is not set-up on the subsidizer's network, the subsidizer has no way of recouping the subsidized amount through service fees. Ensuring activation of a subsidized cellular telephone on the subsidizer's cellular network is thus very important to the subsidizing cellular service carrier.
To program a cellular telephone for use on a cellular network, a retailer is employed to contact a system administrator in a customer activation center associated with the subsidizer to activate the cellular telephone on the subsidizer's cellular network. Typically, the subsidizer pays a substantial commission to its retailers for finding customers and for performing the programming and activation tasks. The expense incurred by a cellular service carrier that is attributable to paid commissions may be passed on as increased service fees to the customer of the cellular telephone or may decrease the profit of the cellular service carrier.
Due partially to the expense associated with paying retailers commissions on the sales of cellular telephones, the cost of cellular telephones remains high. This high cost can be reduced by by-passing the retailer/programmer in the chain of distribution of cellular telephones. By-passing the retailer/programmer can be accomplished by supplying subsidized cellular telephones in large retail chain stores. However, if a subsidized cellular telephone is made generally available as any other product in the retail chain store, no retailer/programmer is available to ensure that a subsidized cellular telephone is set up on the cellular network of the subsidizing cellular service carrier.
Cellular service carriers have not provided a method of ensuring activation of a subsidized cellular telephone made available for general purchase at a retailer to the subsidizer's network.
Another problem encountered when programming cellular telephones is the "person-in-the-middle" problem. The "person-in-the-middle" problem occurs during activation of the cellular telephone. A "person-in-the-middle" may monitor the airways to determine when a cellular phone is being activated. When the "person-in-the-middle" determines that a cellular telephone is being activated on a network, the "person-in-the-middle" may intercept all messages from the programming base station to the cellular telephone. The "person-in-the-middle" may use a higher power to transmit signals to the cellular telephone. Therefore, the "person-in-the-middle" may prevent the base station from communicating directly with the cellular telephone. With the information obtained during the signal transmissions, the "person-in-the middle" may reproduce the information contained in the cellular telephone in another cellular telephone to create a clone of the cellular telephone. The clone could be used without authorization on a cellular network. This unauthorized use may generate significant problems such as unauthorized service fees, extra burdens to the cellular network, etc.
Thus, there is a need in the art to prevent unauthorized access to data of a cellular telephone. There is also a need in the art for a method of limiting, without the aid of a third party, activation of cellular telephones to a designated cellular network. There is also a need in the art for a method of preventing an interceptor of cellular telephone activation signals from obtaining information that enables the interceptor to clone the cellular telephone being activated.